[S Clark]

Amazingly, for a guy with a piano background and 59 yrs old, I played my first Van Cliburn lp just now.  I see what all the fuss was about.  He has the technical mastery of Horowitz but with more emotion and joy.  I just listened to Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto on RCA shaded dog- mono recording from 1958.  Crisp, mostly clear (lower orchestral passages could be better but it could be my mono rig) and such dynamics.
What are your favorite great performances by Van Cliburn?

Scott

[Tyson]

When van Cliburn played in Russia, Richter was on the judging panel.  On a scale of 1 to 10, Richter gave Cliburn a score of 100 and all other pianists a score of zero.

After the embarrassment of losing to an American, the Russians made sure to enter in their strongest candidate the next year - Vladimir Ashkenazy.

My favorite Cliburn recording is of him doing solo Brahms pieces.   

[steve k]

My favorite VC recoding is Debussy's Feux d'artifice. I've never heard anyone else play it so fast that the notes blur together sonically much like the fireworks they're representing. Jaw dropping is all I can say.
steve

[S Clark]

When van Cliburn played in Russia, Richter was on the judging panel.  On a scale of 1 to 10, Richter gave Cliburn a score of 100 and all other pianists a score of zero.

After the embarrassment of losing to an American, the Russians made sure to enter in their strongest candidate the next year - Vladimir Ashkenazy.

My favorite Cliburn recording is of him doing solo Brahms pieces.

Somewhere long ago I read that the judges were scared sh*tless to give the award to an American, and that the decision went all the way to Kruschev. 
From Wikipedia "When it was time to announce a winner, the judges were obliged to ask permission of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to give first prize to an American. "Is he the best?" Khrushchev asked. "Then give him the prize!"

[Brian Cheney]

I was able to hear Cliburn live several times during the early 1960's when he visited Munich.  I have an autographed copy of his Rach PC 3 LP which he signed for me in 1962.  I also met his mother, a delightful person.

The tragedy of Cliburn's career is that both his artistry and technique went into a rapid decline in the late sixties and never recovered.  We all thought he'd be the next Rubinstein, and instead, he turned out to be the next Jackie du Pre (without the MS, of course).

The two concerto recordings made on his return from Moscow with Kondrashin are must-have monuments of the phonograph.  His Tchai PC1, for all its popularity, remains the supreme recording of this work.  The live Rach PC 3 from earlier in the same evening is also a benchmark, while adding the palpable tension and sheer excitement of the live event.

Other great concerto recordings include the McDowell PC2 and Prok 3 (with Hendl and the CSO), the Schumann with Reiner, and the later Brahms Bflat with Kondrashin.  I would pay real money for an aircheck (any quality) of him performing the Schumann in Hollywood Bowl, 1959, conducted by Bruno Walter.

The Rach sonata (live from Moscow), "My Favorite Chopin", the Debussy and Brahms discs, all are stellar.

[Russell Dawkins]

He also had substantial physical strength and the ability to apply it efficiently to the piano, which does translate directly to the maximum loudness any piano produces; there seems almost no absolute limit.
My sister played in the local orchestra (the Victoria Symphony) when he was a guest artist, and no one in the orchestra had ever heard the piano sound that loud. The orchestra was fatigued afterwards from the effort of matching his dynamics.

[DeadFish]

I always like Cliburn when I heard him, but was never struck by any title that I remember.
There was a family tale that was told when I was young, about my Uncle Leonard, my grandmother's brother, playing a duet with Cliburn in front of the St. Louis Symphony, I believe.  If I remember right, the tall-tale usually specified Rhapsody In Blue. 
I'd have liked to hear that!   
But then again, my grandmother, bless her soul, had a propensity to bullshit.   

[Soundminded]

Of more than a dozen recordings I own of the Rachmaninoff Concerto #2 and the dozens more I've heard, none comes close to Van Cliburn's recording with Reiner and the Chicago made around 1960. I just heard a recording of Ashkenazy and it isn't even close. Very nice but not close. After more than 50 years, IMO it's still the best.